A warewash machine is a utility dishwasher used in many restaurants, healthcare facilities and other locations to efficiently clean and sanitize cooking and eating articles, such as, dishes, pots, pans, utensils and other cooking equipment. Articles are placed on a rack and provided to a wash chamber of the warewash machine. In the chamber, cleaning products and rinse agents are applied to the articles during a cleaning process, which includes a wash phase and a rinse phase. At least one cleaning product is applied to the articles during the wash phase. The cleaning product is typically a cleaning agent formed by dissolving one or more chemical products in water. The term chemical product is used broadly to encompass, without limitation, any type of detergent, soap or any other product used for cleaning and/or sanitizing.
At least one rinse agent is applied to the articles during the rinse phase. The rinse agent is typically water with one or more wetting and/or sanitizing agents. The article racks contain holes that enable the cleaning product and rinse agent to pass through the racks during the wash and rinse phases, respectively. At the end of the cleaning process, the rack is removed from the wash chamber so that other racks carrying other articles may be moved into the wash chamber. The cleaning process is then repeated for each of these subsequent racks.
As with most natural resources, it is desirable in most warewash implementations to recycle the cleaning and rinse agents used during the wash and rinse phases, respectively, in order to save utility costs associated with the water used to form these agents. However, one drawback realized when recycling these agents is the drastic loss in temperature of the agents relative to various industry-defined standards. As known to those skilled in the art, these standards define minimum temperatures that may be employed during the phases of the cleaning process. Therefore, warewash implementations that recycle agents for use in the cleaning process also must employ booster heaters to heat both the cleaning agent and the rinse agent.
Unfortunately, many of the lower-end models of warewash machines, such as door-type machines, operate on standard 120 VAC, and therefore do not have the electrical capacity to employ the use of such booster heaters. For this reason, very few conventional door-type warewash machines use recycled cleaning and rinse agents, and consequently the operators of these machines commonly incur substantial water and sewage costs. Even so, the use of booster heaters yields considerably higher energy costs that, in most circumstances, would mitigate the savings realized by conserving water.